Not at all what I mean, and I suppose I owe an apology for expressing inadequately. I loved Jane Eyre, and I had to look up a word on nearly every page. I still haven't, and probably will never, finish Last of the Mohicans, not because it contains words I don't know, but because they're so densely larded onto the language that it reads like an eighth-grade English paper written by a kid who just discovered the thesaurus. Lethally over-written prose. Grotesquely so, even.
I love reading Bierce, or the Romantics, or the Brontes, and having to pull my big dusty dictionary off the shelf, to get into the blood of the language. I love the lyrical evolutions and undulations that Joyce wrung from all the words he spilled into English's fevered womb. I don't love reading a book that is less a story and more a collection of paragraphs centered around language so pretentious or poisonously convoluted it kicks me out of reading and into thematic analysis. Takes all the fun out of the experience.
Oh: to conclude on a note of sucking up, I just finished Murder of Angels, and it was great to get back together with Nikki and Daria. Felt a lot like a reunion with old friends I hadn't seen in ten years. I'll miss them.
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Date: 2010-08-08 01:46 am (UTC)I love reading Bierce, or the Romantics, or the Brontes, and having to pull my big dusty dictionary off the shelf, to get into the blood of the language. I love the lyrical evolutions and undulations that Joyce wrung from all the words he spilled into English's fevered womb. I don't love reading a book that is less a story and more a collection of paragraphs centered around language so pretentious or poisonously convoluted it kicks me out of reading and into thematic analysis. Takes all the fun out of the experience.
Oh: to conclude on a note of sucking up, I just finished Murder of Angels, and it was great to get back together with Nikki and Daria. Felt a lot like a reunion with old friends I hadn't seen in ten years. I'll miss them.